Hi, I have a Big Problem and I wonder if anyone can advise based on their experience and knowledge.

On 19th of October 2006, I transferred 50 Domains via Bulk Transfer, to www.hostway.com. They sent me confirmation to confirm that the Transfer had taken place. After 2 months, I could not log in and I repeatedly sent them email every month to ask for access.

In November 2007, one of the Business's which has been online for 4 years had email errors. I checked the Domain and it was listed up for sale with www.sedo.com . I immediately contacted www.hostway.com and www.domainpeople.com their sister company, who said that we should have renewed the domain.

They offered me assistance in buying back the domain from the new owner.

"However, we would like to assist you with recovering the domain by
contacting one of the domain broker agencies with which we have a
partnership. These agencies have an expertise in the domain recovery
sphere and thus might have some success at recovering your domain."

After some investigation and a few hours on the telephone at 0100 hrs in the morning CET, it appears that www.hostway.com had sold the domain illegally with another 7 months left before the domain expired.

After a Whois search, some guy in Belarusia was the new Registrants name, he had bought 6 x "5 letter .com" domains from our portfolio (market value of US$ 100,000). When I contacted Hostway with evidence, they immediately re-acquired the domains at 0300 hrs European Time. Though they would not return it, unless we signed a Document absolving them of any wrong doing. One of Hostway's Lawyers even threatened to re-sell the domains unless I signed their Document within 24 hrs.

I advised them that our Business had vanished after an Immaculate 4 year online record, due to their incompetence and that if they did not return the IP Property, our action would be severe. They then pointed the DNS back to the Website after a couple of hours as otherwise we would sue for Brand Damage, Loss of Income etc..

The Domain was down for 11-12 days. We had no income during this period and our Brand was definitely damaged as some of our clients and partners called us personally and asked if the company was still trading.

I contacted ICANN to make an Official Complaint against an ICANN registrar, they advised me to talk with Hostway and said it was a "Legal Matter".

The following day after contacting ICANN, Hostway returned the domains without us signing any waiver and threatened legal action against me personally and our company, if we contacted anyone with our "outrageous claims".

We have received no apology from Hostway, No compensation and we feel like we have been treated very badly. We would like to know the following:-
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1] Has anyone else experienced this problem with Hostway or another
Domain Registrar and how did it get resolved?

Our Domain was down for 10-12 days and our Ranking dropped in Google. Our traffic has reduced for the domain
and recently one of my colleagues had to find another job. We spoke to an SEO Guy and he said that pointing to
www.sedo.com - "Domain Up For Sale" for 10 days would have a bad effect in Google as it makes us look
unprofessional and not very serious about our Business.

2] Does anyone know exactly what effect would occur with our Google Ranking to our site after 4 years online when
the domain points to www.sedo.com - "up for sale" for 10-12 days?

The above information will help us try to get some compensation.
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I look forward to any suggestions which can help us solve this Domain Nightmare.